Highlands Ranch, Colorado.

In March, I featured a couple of images captured by my cell phone and discussed my first impressions of Luminar Neo. You can recall that story here. Then Luminar Neo was sitting at version 1.0.2 and I commented that it could have used a little more refinement to meet the expectations their pre-sale advertising garnered.

As I write this, it is now early June, and Neo is now at version 1.0.7. With the addition of a couple of the latest features, most notably the ability to save presets and the automatic masking function, the program is much more aligned with promises made pre-release. I am most impressed with how AI Mask scans the image and locates with accuracy several object types. Though it isn’t perfect, tweaking the mask with a brush allows some sophisticated subjects to be isolated for special treatment in any photograph. Additional masks were also added for radial and linear gradients. Masks can also be copied and pasted for multiple operations on the same masked subject. Luminar Neo has now replaced Luminar AI as my final processing tool for most images, even though there are still a couple of features missing in earlier versions of Luminar.

About the photo: As I wrote in that post in March, Highlands Ranch is one of the largest planned developments in the country and is large enough to be its own city, though mail addressed to Littleton Colorado will get delivered to the correct address in Highlands Ranch. Formerly part of the Big Dry Creek Cheese Ranch, a portion of the ranch still remains as Cheese Ranch Park. Along the walking paths, a replica windmill, a small pond, and interpretive signs tell the history of the park.

As we walked along the path, I noticed some trees leaning heavily with what appeared to be the prevailing winds on the Colorado plains. After walking under the trees, I turned around and saw the symmetry of the leaning trees and captured the image. A rework in Lightroom and Neo provided this view of Cheese Ranch Park. You can click the image above to pixel peep in HD, and to view the other images of this two-part series on Cheese Ranch Park. You can view the entire album here.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge-response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner

Highlands Ranch, Colorado.

I am gaining more experience with Luminar Neo. Since my post featuring a first look at the program here, I have learned a lot more about the program. It does have several of the promised new features, but at the time of this writing, some of the features of AI are missing in Neo (though still promised). It would appear they got behind schedule and felt the need to publish the product even though it wasn’t quite where they wanted it to be upon delivery. That’s just my opinion.

Before going any further, I would like to address the war in Ukraine. Skylum Software, developers of Luminar, and other photo processing software are based there. This post is written in early March. Here is a link to more information about Skylum and the war effort. Yesterday I bought a template set from Skylum as the proceeds from the templates are being transferred to humanitarian organizations that are helping Ukraine right now.

This week, I found a cellphone photo from a series captured in the park near a friend’s house in Highlands Ranch. I have been using older photos to learn what works and doesn’t work in Luminar Neo. If you are new to Skylum Software and want to give Neo a try, I would say, “Go for it.” They will only make it better. It has already been through two feature upgrades since version 1.0.0 went live.

If you’re used to Luminar AI and don’t want to try out the newest toys included in Neo, there’s no hurry. Luminar AI and its predecessor, Luminar 4, are nicely equipped and will work just fine until what I would call Luminar Neo’s final release. I might say, though, that if you are into portraiture, Neo appears to work better than AI, and you may want to have the current version to learn about its portrait masking features.

Highlands Ranch is one of the largest planned developments in the country and is large enough to be its own city, though mail addressed to Littleton Colorado will get delivered to the correct address in Highlands Ranch. Behind a friend’s condo, a large park beckons. Formerly part of the Big Dry Creek Cheese Ranch, Cheese Ranch Park still features a replica windmill, small pond, walking paths, and interpretive signs. I’ve featured images captured here before, but the image I chose today features a view of Big Dry Creek as it runs near the edge of the park. Houses adjacent to the park are visible in the background.

About the photo: After downloading from my Samsung S20U, the image languished on my hard drive as I had nicer images from the park to play with. Looking for something new to experiment with from within Neo, I decided to give this image a try. It was actually two images on my cell phone. I actually shot two views, one with a bit more sky than the other.

I started with Adobe Lightroom and used the panorama tool to create a vertical image. That left a bit too much foreground, so I cropped the image square, did my usual basic tweaks in Lightroom, and sent the image off to Neo. One feature I like in Neo is the ability to keep a history of individual tool edits. Early on, I used the Accent AI tool in the Enhance menu to adjust the entire image. After making further tweaks, if I were to call upon Accent AI again, all the settings are back to zero, and from there, for example, I could mask the sky and use Accent AI again to specifically address the issue that I wanted to adjust. If I specifically want to readjust my original setting, I can go to the Edits tab, find the specific instance of Accent AI and readjust it there. That’s something I couldn’t do in Luminar AI.

Another new tool in Neo is Relight AI. I used it to brighten only the foreground. I could have done that with a mask or even a linear gradient directly from Lightroom. Luminar Neo allows you to adjust foreground brightness, background brightness, and depth (demarcation point separating foreground and background.) Relight AI did a good job of adding light to the foreground images.

In WordPress, I used the Image Compare block to demonstrate the “before and after” result. The Image Compare block doesn’t allow a direct link to my Flickr images, but if you click on either the “Highlands Ranch” caption under the image or click here, you can pixel peep both images in 2K HD on my Flickr site.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner

Highlands Ranch, Colorado.

This week, Patti Moed asks us to share our personal inspiration in our photography. She writes in part, “As we move ahead to LAPC #160, we are inviting you to share photos of your inspiration. What does your inspiration look like? It can be a place, a subject, a person, or a book, for example. Actually, it can be just about anything that inspires you.” You can read her entire challenge post here.

To misquote and paraphrase Thomas Edison, inspiration is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration. The image above, for example, is one of my favorites. What inspired me was the coloration of the duck and the interesting pattern of reflections in the water. The duck was very near the shoreline and the autumn weather caused the shoreline plants to lose their green appearance. The brown and the white tones in the reflection were created by the shoreline plants.

The original image from the D-500 Nikon didn’t reflect what I saw in my original composition. Manipulating the photo in Lightroom and Luminar gave the reflections much more emphasis. Adding structure and clarity added also to the duck’s appearance.

Highlands Ranch is one of the largest planned communities in the country and comprises three zip codes around Littleton, Colorado. It is also soon to be the former residence of a personal inspiration for me, Fred Mast, who will soon be moving to a different state. Near his home in Highlands Ranch, a large park area is preserved for the residents. There are plenty of trails for walking in the summer or cross-country skiing in the winter. A large pond in the park is the home of that duck in the opening photo.

The image of the trees above was inspired by their leaning in the same direction, no doubt created by the strong prevailing winds. I am attracted to repeating patterns and use them often in my landscape photos.

This image is a more complete view of the pond in the opening photograph. That’s not likely the same duck as the opening image was captured in 2017 and the image above in July of this year.

I am inspired by dramatic skies and sometimes go out of my way to include them in my images. The image above was created by two cell phone photos. I captured the sky and the background of trees in one image and the foreground and creek in a second. I then used Lightroom to join the two images into a single vertical panoramic scene which created an almost square image format. I then used Luminar AI to bring out the structure and details in both the sky and the grass in the foreground.

I skipped over some of the details earlier when I mentioned my friend, Fred Mast. Prior to his retirement, Fred has had many careers, a photographer, correspondent, and Information Technology professional among others. Fred and I met by chance on a social media photo-sharing site and over the few years I’ve known Fred, we have joined forces to photograph our joint travels.

We are both fans of those steam railroad excursions. The image above was captured on the Cumbres-Toltec run between Antonito, Colorado, and Chama, New Mexico. We were standing on opposite corners of the platforms of two cars when one of us had the inspiration to capture each other in the act of taking a photo of the other.

Thank you to Patti for the inspiration to share the views of Highlands Ranch. Given Fred’s impending move, it’s not likely that I will be visiting that park again. On the bright side, I expect Fred and I will be exploring his new part of the country and sites to photograph in Wyoming.

Feel free to click on any of the images above to view them in my Flickr album in HD and to scroll through the gallery.

John Steiner